“Neither can the wave that has passed by be recalled, nor the hour which has passed return again.” Ovid

It is just over a year since I last wrote anything for the blog. I made a conscious decision to stop writing the blog because there were a number of other demands on my time and it became necessary to be a little more discreet than usual. Robbie started a new contract last September, working on a bid team. It was a new experience for him and quite a steep learning curve, but he loves a challenge - he's on his third bid now! I have had to make some important adjustments too, I gave up my job to work with Robbie, taking charge of the business admin, driving and the various other tasks necessary to keep Robbie 'on track'. I continued with my writing work and my time was taken up with writing, proof reading and selecting photos for my book. It was such a relief when everything had been delivered to the publisher! The book was published in May and I had the pleasure of seeing my book on the shelves of Waterstones and W.H. Smiths. 

I didn't intended to return to the blog. Several of my friends urged me to start writing again, but I wasn't convinced and oddly it was a book that changed my mind. I have been reading The Diary of Samuel Pepys, and I find it fascinating because it deals with the so many of the ordinary aspects of life. It may be almost 350 years since Samuel Pepys wrote his diary but he and Robbie seem to have a lot in common - perhaps men haven't changed greatly over the years! My children, who are now all adults do not approve of the blog, or to be more accurate they would prefer to remain anonymous. So in future they will not write about them as much and when their names crop up I will come up with aliases for them.

tomorrow will be our ninth wedding anniversary and we are looking forward to a weekend away. Yesterday a friend asked me if I would change Robbie if I could, I enjoyed thinking about it for a minute or two but my answer was no, I wouldn't change him. He is a good man with a big heart and a passion for life, why on earth would I want to change him? Not so long ago my son asked me if Robbie had been my mid life crisis, his question made me laugh but I have to admit that we are an unlikely couple. The important thing is that we are happy; we have been through a lot together over the years and it has brought us closer and made us stronger than ever. 

Don't smother each other. No one can grow in shade - Leo Buscaglia

Normal Service Has Been Resumed

Probably those words will not mean anything to younger people, but they will be very familiar to my generation. When I was a child it was fairly common for technical difficulties to interrupt television programmes (there were only three channels back then) and the when things went wrong they would put up the test card and play music until they could fix the problem. The announcer would tell us that "normal service will be resumed as soon as possible" and we would wait hoping that the break in service wouldn't last very long and even normal broadcasting was about to resume the announcer would say ".... Normal service has been resumed"

From the point of view of the blog 'normal service has been resumed'. I stopped writing the blog several months ago because I was unwell and my stamina levels were extremely low. It was a real struggle just to cope with the essentials of life. I was determined that the blog would not become a miserable tale of woes, but it was such a struggle to keep my writing bright and up beat when I had been feeling unwell for so long that I was losing hope of ever feeling better.

The good news is that after attending a lot of hospital appointments and seeing three different consultants I am finally getting better. I am not coughing anymore - well not much anyway! More importantly I have reason to hope that this is not just a temporary calm between bouts of illness, but a sign that we are dealing with the  causes of the problem rather than the symptoms. There is still a long way to go but I feel so much better.

So what has been happening with us over the last few months? I suppose there are lots of things that I should have written about, but I will catch up with some of those over the next few weeks. Robbie has been working in Darlington for the greater part of each week. Surprisingly it is an arrangement that suits us both fairly well, Robbie enjoys the work and staying in Darlington is better than a long commute every day. I miss him of course but it is nice not having to get up before the birds every day to take him to the station. I'd better make the most of it because his contract ends in mid September and his next contract will involve a daily commute. He is really looking forward to a new challenge and it will be nice to have him at home again. My daughter obtained her post graduate qualification in June and she is now a fully qualified geography teacher. She has a job at a school about half an hour away from our home and she is looking forward to the new challenges that the September term will bring. 

Robbie and I are getting ready to go on holiday to Norfolk, so I will do my best to update the blog every day, but the Internet connection in Norfolk is precarious that I will not make any promises! I probably will not be able to add any photos I get home again.

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

For the last few days I have been creating extra pages that in due course will be linked to the blog. I have been looking back at old posts in order to select some favourites. It was a surprisingly emotional experience looking back through time to the start of the blog, I wrote the first post on this blog in November 2006. A lot of water has flowed under a lot of bridges since then. 

Reading those old posts has made me realise a few important things. Perhaps the clearest theme running through the posts is that Robbie gets away with murder at times, especially when it comes to abandoning me in favour of his beloved trains. That is mostly my fault for being too accepting of his odd little ways for too long. Reading those old posts has prompted me to make a big decision about my life and Robbie is not going to like it. It is time to take control, we have to de-clutter!! We have too much junk and it is taking up so much room that it will soon be standing room only! I can live with his obsession with the railway, but 'standing room only' is taking things too far.


We are both 'blessed' with the hoarding gene, but in my case it tends to relate mostly to books and to things that hold special memories for me such a as letters, old birthday cards and things that the children made as they grew up. Robbie just hoards, shoes, ties, books, magazines, pens, notebooks, model trains, vinyl records, cds, Lego minifigures .......... The list is endless, but you get the idea. It is time for both of us to bite the bullet and get rid of a lot of the clutter in our lives. It will take time, but it will make things so much easier and it will give us much more space when it is done. So this weekend we will take the first step, two black sacks each sounds like a reasonable start.

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations - Faith Baldwin

It has been necessary to make changes to the blog, partly because Blogger (the platform I use) has changed, but also because the blog has grown and I felt that having everything on one page made it look too 'busy'. Robbie didn't like the first change that I made, he said it didn't feel like his blog any more, so we have settled on this fairly simple layout. Just below the header you will see the links to the photo page and the information page, everything is still there but I hope the home page looks cleaner now. Hopefully there will be no more big changes, there are one or two cosmetic changes to make and I need to make it easier for people to find older posts, but that will take a few days. Thank you for being patient over the last week or two while I have experimented with different layouts, and thank you for your continued interest in the blog.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers - Thomas Jefferson

There are many things that I love about Robbie, but his choice of newspaper is is not one of them. I detest the thing I resent the waste of paper and I resent the waste of money, I would rather he spent it on a railway magazine, even if he spent it on  Lego or any of his other many and varied obsessions it wouldn't seem so pointless. I have managed to change or modify many things about Robbie over the years, but he remains stubbornly attached to his limp lefty newspaper, so I do my best to ignore it.

Yesterday evening we settled down in the lounge, me with my laptop and Robbie across the room with his newspaper. I was lost in my own little world writing the blog when I glanced up to see Robbie holding his phone out to the cat, and more worrying still the cat was looking at it as if he was reading a text! I asked Robbie what he was doing and with a totally serious expression he said that he was showing the cat the time to prove that he had to wait another hour until feeding time. 

I shook my head in disbelief and settled back to writing the blog. A little later completely out of the blue Robbie asked "How much does mum pay for David's socks these days". It seemed such an odd question that I had to ask him to repeat it in case I hadn't heard him properly. I told Robbie that I have never given a passing thought to the price of my step father's socks - but thanks to Robbie I have now! Once he get's started on a subject there is no stopping him and I heard all about the advantages of loose top socks, a very good deal he had spotted; the price, the colour, it went on an on until I begged him to stop.

Finally he was quiet and I went back to what I was doing. Peace reigned for a little while, then Robbie's voice rang out asking "Have you noticed that you don't often see radishes in the supermarket these days?" I thought about it for a minute and decided to try my luck with a one word answer - no! It was worth a try, but it just encouraged him to provide more radish related information. I listened for a while but I really couldn't summon up much interest in radishes. I asked if he had ever eaten a radish and he informed me that he hadn't. I informed him that he hadn't missed much! I told him that if he was that interested I would buy him some radishes, but he quickly declined and told me that it just was something he had been reading about. 

So now yo know why I dislike that dratted newspaper, it puts ridiculous ideas in his head!

You were born an original. Don't die a copy - John Mason

Over the years many people have asked me why I write the blog, Usually I tell them that it stops me from harming Robbie because writing things down helps to get it out of my system. That is only part of the truth, I have written a blog for many years now and before that I used to write a diary. Mostly it is for me, because writing helps me to process things and it is a nice way to preserve nice memories and to remember the little details of life that are so quickly forgotten. The other day Robbie told me that one of his friends who is a regular reader of the blog had told him that one thing comes through loud and clear - that I love Robbie very much. I'm pleased about that. Maybe we are a bit of an unconventional couple, but it works and that is all that matters. 


All the coverage about leap year made me wonder what I was doing on Feb 29th on previous leap years and how much things have changed. This was my blog post from Feb 29th 2004, our 'nameless' son was 9 then. 

"the 'son with no name' gave me the most extraordinary reason to avoid having a bath, apparently if children are clean witches can smell the children but if they are dirty the witches just smell the dirt and the children are safe. I was tempted to point out to him that with all his aftershave, body spray and deodorant a witch would have problems breathing, never mind smelling! He claims that he got this information from reading The Witches by Roald Dahl, he was a bit obsessed by the book a while ago. Last year he became convinced that a teacher at his school was a witch because she had a little mole or wart at the side of her nose. No one could convince him that he was wrong and for the whole year he lived in fear of her turning him into a mouse. The problem has been solved this year because that teacher does not teach him.

'the nameless one' had a very stern talk with me this morning. It seems he finds his nicknames embarrassing (he has several), he has insisted that I must not reveal his nicknames to anyone else and I must only ever call him by his own name or Flash! I will try my best, but old habits are hard to break".



How times change! We can't get him out of the bathroom now. As far as I know, he he doesn't give a passing thought to witches these days, and he has survived to the ripe old age of 17 without being turned into a mouse. Remembering not to use his embarrassing nickname is still a struggle for me, but these days he would kill me if I called him Flash! That was the name he adopted during his 'spy phase' something which he does not wish to be reminded of.


Most of all the old diary entry reminds me that times change and people change too, sometimes life is tough, but we are a strong family because there is a lot of love and we accept each other as we are, unconventional and unique. I am glad that our son is confident enough to be himself, it is hard growing up with Asperger syndrome and I am very proud of the way he copes.  


Robbie was certainly born an original and I wouldn't change him for the world (well not much anyway!!). He may have a very odd taste in footwear, come to that his dress sense is somewhat idiosyncratic too, but inside there is a surprisingly conventional man. He is honest, strong, determined, hard working and full of fun. It would be so easy for him to dwell on his problems and the things he can't do, but he never gives up, he just gets on with life. I am not sure that Robbie would think that he had much in common with an ancient Greek philosopher, but I am not so sure. Epicurus said “Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance” and I think Robbie would agree with that.


According to tradition a woman can propose to a man on 29th February. Thankfully my mum always taught me that a woman can do anything that a man can do, so I didn't wait for leap year!!

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone. Coco Chanel

Hearing is one of the body's five senses. But listening is an art. - Frank Tyger

When people ask me why I write the blog, I often tell them that if I didn't write about it I would probably kill Robbie. That is just a joke, I love Robbie very much and I would never do anything to hurt him, but there is some truth in the idea that writing about an issue is a way of processing it. I have written a blog for at least 10 years and even before that I wrote about my life in letters and diaries. Looking back it is true that at some points it was a way of helping me through the difficult times, but mostly it was a way of enjoying and preserving the special little moments of life. This little moment came from March 2004 when my son was 9


"This morning was a bit of a challenge; 'nameless son' had his usual tummy ache and was even more reluctant than usual to get ready for school. He had tried to draw my attention to his suffering and became frustrated when I hardly noticed. In the end we were treated to one of his Royal Shakespeare Company performances. He clutched his tummy, sagged at the knees and writhed around on his back like a dying wasp. After all that he went to school and survived the day with no ill effects


My Galaxy went back to the Ford garage for them to put right what they should have done in the first place. I went out early to check that it was all neat and tidy, just as well really because I found a very lifelike gun under the seat – left by a certain young spy! It could have given someone a nasty shock.

Today is unusual in that the subject of the blog is something that hurts me very much but something that seems to cause great amusement to other people. I have some hearing loss, caused by a serious ear infection called labyrinthitis which I had more than 15 years ago. It left me with some nasty symptoms including spinning vertigo and balance problems. Over the years my brain had found ways to compensate for the balance problems most of the time, but the vertigo has become part of everyday life. The balance problems are worse when I am tired or unwell. At first I didn't notice the hearing loss - but other people did! It seems to have got worse over the years and after much nagging by my family, I saw a hearing specialist at the hospital. By then I had accepted that I have a problem, but I was shocked to find that nothing can be done about it. Apparently it is due to nerve damage and it can't be helped or put right. I know that I have no right to moan, I can hear and my problems are trivial compared to many others, but it is a struggle at times. It makes it hard for me to do certain things at work and my family get very cross when I don't hear them.

The other day Robbie was talking to me as we walked along outside, he was slightly ahead of me and there was no way that I could hear him. I asked him to repeat himself and he got cross, I explained that I couldn't hear and he told me to "try harder". I was really hurt, I know he didn't really mean it, he was just cross, but it sums up the way most people respond to my hearing loss. I get teased about it, it is a bit of a joke or people just get cross when I get things wrong. I wouldn't dream of telling Robbie to try harder when he is in pain and I hope I would never laugh at or about a persons disability. So why is hearing loss funny? It really doesn't feel very amusing from my point of view.

'The problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.' George Bernard Shaw

Doing Battle

If my brain was like a computer I would be able to erase old files and junk to free up memory space. Instead I find myself struggling to remember what I went to the shop for but still able to remember useless chunks of information from years ago. On Thursday evening I found myself sitting in a parking space at the local Tesco which is attached to a filling station. As I waited for Robbie I glanced up at the signs above the fuel pumps Esso, and suddenly an advertising jingle replayed itself in my head. "The Esso sign means happy motoring, the esso sign means happy motoring, so call on the Esso sign", I dread to think how long that little gem has been lurking in a dusty corner of my brain. I looked it up when I came got home and YouTube alleged that it was from the 1950s, I will admit to being a child of 1960s but I wasn't even a twinkle in the 1950s!

Anyway by the time we got home I had skipped nimbly over the stepping stones of memory and recited a sizeable chunk of a Robert Browning poem to Robbie. I have probably mentioned before that Robbie is a man of varied and surprising tastes, but I may not have  revealed that he likes me to recite poetry to him. For some reason my maternal grandmother cropped up in conversation and I told him that The Pied Piper by Robert Browning was her party piece - she could empty a room with it! For those who are not familiar with it, it is a lovely poem but it is very, very long. She knew the whole poem by heart and as a young child I thought it was the coolest thing to get her to recite it for me, it fees as if I have known that poem for ever. Reciting it brings back many happy memories, but it is no practical use. 


Anyway, back to computers, I have been doing battle with my computer for some time, or to be more accurate, doing battle with the Blogger template I use for the blog. I have tamed most of the gremlins in the system or at least found ways to work around them, but when I wanted to change the layout slightly it started acting the fool. It left my text looking as if it was hanging in mid air, all I wanted to was to have a distinct dark coloured background with light text in my chosen font. It seemed like a fairly simple thing to do, but Blogger wasn't having it. I wasted hours trying every way I could think of to get it to do what I wanted without success. I don't like to be beaten and in the end I found a rather clunky solution, I created what I wanted elsewhere then turned it into a PDF file and imported it. It worked! There should have been a much better way of doing it but at least it is done. 


So now I have my next battle, trying to the make the 'contact me' button work. So far it has led me a merry dance, but if I am capable of keeping Robbie more or less on the straight and narrow, I am certainly not going to be defeated by a contact button!!
 

The Art of A Good Argument

The fact that Robbie and I argue will come as no surprise to regular readers of the blog, but the things that we argue about are perhaps a little more surprising. I listened to a discussion on the radio recently about the causes of arguments within relationships and I realised that Robbie and I argue about some very strange things compared to other people. So I decided to come up with a list, and looking back at the blog has revealed lots of evidence too..

The gender of God - Robbie is convinced that God is male, rather formal and definitely C of E, my understanding of God is considerably different. If Robbie gets too pompous about it I tell him that God is female and he loses it completely!   Sunday Morning Musings

The merits or otherwise of Ken Livingstone - This subject crops up when Robbie wants to provoke an argument, he knows exactly which buttons to press to get a reaction and it always works. The mere mention of that odious little man sends my blood pressure sky high and totally ruins my day. Red and Green, Not Fit to Be Seen

The fridge - Robbie is the self appointed ruler of the fridge. It has to be set out his way and he even expects me to buy condiments and such like in the correct size to fit in the spaces that he has designated for them. He is destined to be a very disappointed man because I do as I like!
The Fridge Police  Fitting In  King of the Fridge

Supermarket shopping - Supermarket shopping together is a very dangerous activity because it is very likely to lead to arguments. Robbie likes to push the trolley, to organise the trolley so that the items are stacked in the correct manner (according to him), to dictate the size shape and brand of item purchased and to be in complete control of the order the items are put through the checkout. There have been occasions when we have almost come to blows and on several memorable occasions he has danced with fury!  Survival - Against The Odds!

Trains come first - I shouldn't really complain, Robbie has never made any secret of the fact that he lives, breathes and sleeps trains, but there are occasions when it would be really nice if he could put me first just for a few minutes. In Disgrace Again 

Waking me up  - I really wish that I could make him understand how annoying it is to be woken up. He may be able to go to sleep as soon as his head hits the pillow, but if he wakes me up it takes me ages to get back to sleep. Of all the things that we argue about I find this the most hurtful because it is so thoughtless.  Tiredness Can Kill


What to wear - Robbie is so conventional in some ways, but when it comes to clothes he is unique, in fact I sometimes wonder about his sanity. The clothes he wears are a bit like him, loud, startling and a bit crazy - need I say more! I believe passionately in freedom of choice - my freedom to choose not to go out with him looking like that!! Human Rights


Hoarding - Both of us are hoarders, we both hoard different things for different reasons and it often leads to conflict. I have written countless posts about Robbie and his love of clutter, so it seems only fair to link to posts that explain what I hoard and why. Confessions of a Hoarder  Parting with Memories

Being tactless - Robbie has an unfortunate habit of speaking his thoughts and it can get him into big trouble at times Questions Questions 

Lack of awareness - Robbie is very lovable, but he has a complete lack of awareness of the way that his actions impact on those around him - mostly me!
Give Him an Inch and He Takes a Mile! 


The Location of the North - This is a matter of fierce debate. Having grown up in Northamptonshire I know that the North starts at Watford Gap but Robbie grew up in Staffordshire and he gets extremely annoyed when I say that he is from the north. We have a similar debate about the Midlands, Robbie thinks that the Midlands means Birmingham, but I keep telling him that Northamptonshire is classed as East Midlands while the whole area around Birmingham is the West Midlands. If yo really want a reaction from Robbie tell him that he has a Birmingham accent - and then run very fast!! I cant tell the difference but he insists that his Walsall accent is completely different.


Burial or Cremation - This is something that we will never agree about. When the time comes I want to be cremated because I think it is cleaner and more responsible, but Robbie wants to be planted. If he really annoys me I tell him that he will have to make sure he outlives me if he wants to get his own way, but he knows that if it came to it I would of course respect his wishes.

Some of these things are fairly trivial but some we could almost fight to the death over. Maybe that is why the blog is so useful, it helps me to get it out of my system without harming him! Some people say it is healthy to argue, it is better than not communicating at all and it is fun making up afterwards!

A Fitting Description

Sometimes when I sit down to write the blog I cant write about the most pressing issues, thoughts and feelings as it would either be breeching the confidence of someone who would not want that issue made public or it would make extremely boring reading. That was the case today, so I did what I usually do when this happens, I clicked on to a site for writers looking for inspiration. There was a long list of questions, but the one that jumped out at me was 'describe yourself in one word'. That was a fairly easy question for me to write about because my special word was given to me a very long time ago and over the years I have grown into it.


I went to a very traditional school that put a strong emphasis on academic achievement. The teaching methods may seem rather old fashioned by today's standards but I am glad that we had to learn so much by heart, because it has stayed with me all my life and the poetry in particular has brought me so much pleasure. From the age of 9 we had spoken English lessons with the formidable Mrs Nichol who could strike fear into even the bravest heart without even raising her voice. We had a textbook called Poems for Pleasure and we were expected to choose a poem from the book, write it out in an exercise book, learn it by heart and then recite it in the lesson. She would hear half the class each lesson so the whole process worked on a fortnightly cycle. 


When my name was called I took my exercise book across to her desk then walked across to the corner opposite her desk and recited my poem. I was fairly pleased with myself as I had remembered it without prompting and I hoped I'd read with enough expression and meaning to satisfy. There was a long pause when I finished the poem then her deep terrifying voice boomed out "Idiosyncratic, what is the meaning of idiosyncratic?" I was frozen to the spot, the word was not in the poem and I had no idea what it meant. I told her that I did not know. She replied "idiosyncratic, meaning peculiar unto one's self; learn it and remember it because you will need it for the rest of your life to excuse your spelling!" My spelling has improved since those days but the word has remained with me ever since. I developed a great respect for Mrs Nichol, she was certainly formidable but she was an amazing teacher with a very good sense of humour.


I like the word idiosyncratic, it sums me up very well. I do things my way, I am not a sheep, I don't follow blindly I make my own decisions and I have my own opinions. That may irritate people sometimes, but I like it that way and I am not going to change, so don't waste time trying. If I had to choose a second word to describe me it would be 'determined' (or as my family would say 'stubborn'). It is not so easy to think of just one word to describe Robbie, he is a man of many words and one word would never be enough to describe him. At the moment the only word that even comes close is impossible!

A Rather Special Person

People say that everyone remembers where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had died, they say the same about John Lennon and Elvis Presley too. I am too young to remember the death of Kennedy and I have no lasting memories about the other two, but I can vividly remember where I was and how I felt when I heard of the death of John Peel on 25th October 2004. The shock of the news hit me like a physical force. Without him my Saturday mornings would never be the same again. I have been a Radoi 4 addict for almost as long as I can remember and Home Truths with John Peel was the highlight of my week. Home Truths was a rather like John Peel, in touch with real people, interesting, eclectic, hard to define yet always charismatic. John was a natural communicator with an informal conversational style, and those of us who listened to him regularly felt that we knew him because he shared something of himself and his family with us.


In a way it was John Peel who led me to write the blog. I began bloging when my first husband Eric was ill with colon cancer. It started as a very practical way of keeping everyone up to date with how he was, I couldn't cope with everyone ringing every day, so the blog gave us the freedom to just be a family for a few more precious weeks. It was Home Truths that gave me the idea for the blog, sometime before John had interviewed a man who had used a blog to chronicle the last months of a terminally ill family member. I remembered the interview and I realised that a blog could help us too. It enabled Eric to keep in touch with all his friends and they could check on his progress and leave messages for him as often as they wanted. Gradually I noticed that the blog was helping me to process what was happening and after Eric died I continued to write blog, it kept me in touch with people and in a way it helped me to look beyond my grief. I have been blogging ever since.


Life moves on and sadly we have to part with some of the people we love along the way, but we will never forget them and our lives are so much richer because their lives touched ours.

Writers Block

There are a number of things that prevent me writing the blog. Sometimes I am very busy and despite my best intentions I fall behind with the blog. I try not to write when I am feeling very unhappy or angry because it doesn't seem fair on whoever I am angry with. I don't write very much about Sam because he doesn't like being written about and I am cautious about how much I write about the rest of our family. As if those reasons were not enough a new reason has popped up recently - I am really happy! I don't mean that I am usually unhappy, but right now I am enjoying life so much that I am struggling to find the time and energy for the blog as well, but this weekend I have promised myself that I will catch up and get back into a routine with the blog.

My Writing Work

You may have noticed that I have added a new link to other articles I have written. You can find the link on the right hand side of the blog just under the hit counter. I would really appreciate it if you could have a look at each of the articles, click on the 'like it' button and leave a brief comment. It will help my reputation and my income. There will be new articles every day, so please check back often. Thank you.

If you prefer you can bookmark my profile page, you will find the links to my articles on the left of the page below my profile.
http://www.triond.com/users/Frances+Lawrence

To Blog or Not To Blog

You may have noticed the survey on the top right hand side of the page asking if after almost three years it is time for me to stop writing the blog. I often wonder if I am just talking to myself and by now everyone must have heard more than enough about Robbie. Anyway here is your chance to express an opinion and if you can't be bothered to answer I will assume that means I should stop writing. Don't worry, I can't tell who voted so you will not offend me!

Memories

Apparently we have several new blog readers, I always find it amazing that anyone should want to read the blog, but apparently they do. Anyway I decided to go back and choose a few of my favourite blog posts so to amuse the new readers.

Car Wash
Human Rights
Naked Truth
Family Ties -and Shirts!
The Wellington Boot Phase
Essentials
Feeling Blue

Traffic Report

I use a service called Sitemeter to help me keep track of who is reading the blog. Don't panic it doesn't reveal your contact details or any personal information, but it gives some very interesting information, including the location of the visitor and the time of the visit. I have been surprised to find that people visit the blog from a number of countries including USA, Canada, India, Philippines and Australia. I hope they don't think that everyone in England is like Robbie – that really would be scary!

Sitemeter also tells me the search terms used when people come to the blog via google or other search engines, I had a look at some of these the other day and I can only conclude that people do some very odd searches. Here are one or two of the strangest ones

national fig roll crisis
how do you get the fig into the gig roll
wake the fish
Jimmy neutron t shirts
bad things about William Shakespeare
sometimes it is not necessary to tell the truth
people in Shakespeare used to wear
craigentinny dentist blog
random demon writings
Samuel Rowbottom

I don't suppose they found many useful answers to their questions on the blog, but perhaps they were not as disappointed as the various people who searched for Robbie Photos expecting to find Robbie Williams smiling back at them, but instead they stumbled upon assorted images of Robbie instead. I'm not sure the world is ready for Robbie as a pin-up, but you never know!

Coping Strategies

Recently a number of people have asked how I cope with Robbie, I don't really see it as coping with him, I want to be with him. You could just as well ask him how he copes with me! He is certainly more unique than most, and yes, I admit that he can be downright frustrating, but I think that has something to do with being male. On the whole I am supportive of his interests, after all while he is playing trains or going to gigs he isn't getting into trouble, and he could have chosen far more expensive hobbies. I guess the answer to how I cope with Robbie lies in the blog, when he frustrates me I write about it, it prevents me from beating him to a pulp! He has many good points too, but perhaps I don't write about those things as much - there are limits to what I want to share!

I don't really mind Robbie's railway obsession, we have enough common ground to make it work. I am very interested in history and railway history is fascinating, so there is plenty to keep me interested. I enjoy travelling by train and it is nice to go on journeys together, but most of the time I don't go with Robbie on his days out. I have things to do at home and I would get bored at diesel galas and model rail exhibitions. You have to be certain kind of person to enjoy trundling backwards and forwards over the same stretch of track all day just to travel behind different engines. The one good thing about railway open days is that they make Robbie seem incredibly normal, there are some very odd specimens around. I think it is the sandals and socks that I find most alarming! To be fair most railway people I have met are nice, but however normal they seem they all have that obsessive streak to a greater or lesser extent.

Robbie has mentioned that one or two of his colleagues partners have threatened to write a blog too. I could always offer a spot for a guest blogger!! Robbie showed me the first edition of their staff magazine, it made me rather grateful because Robbie's obsessions are much more normal than some. Imagine having to cope with someone who is so obsessed with bottle openers that his collection has taken over an entire house! At least Robbie can't bring a deltic home!

Robbie's next hospital appointment came through last Friday and typically the date offered was for the week of our holiday. He has managed to change it, but it means that he will have to wait until mid June to get the results of his MRI scan.

Don't Mention the Boots! 09.01.08

After all the rushing around and distraction over the Christmas period, I am finally getting organised again. I spent some time transferring last years posts to the new blog site today, it takes ages but it is very interesting to re read the posts. Looking back on a whole year of Robbie's escapades can be exhausting, with him around there is rarely a dull moment - no wonder I am always tired. I can hardly believe that it is a whole year since my first railway related rant http://robbiesrandomramblings.blogspot.com/2008/01/answer-to-rail-congestion-become-sheep.html

My favourite post has to be Sam's description of Robbie, it was so accurate and very funny. I have added it to the home page of the new blog site, it is in the left hand column towards the bottom of the page. http://robbiesrandomramblings.blogspot.com/

Robbie is still feeling sore and bruised after his fall but I think he will survive, his dignity suffered a bit of a dent but he'll get over it. His new suit arrived today, he has ordered some new footwear and tomorrow he is off to M&S to order some more trousers, that seems to have lifted his spirits considerably. A word of warning, don't mention footwear or you will never shut him up, you wouldn't believe that one man could find so much to say about one pair of boots!

Moving 04.12.07

I have been thinking of moving the blog for some time and yesterday I finally decided to 'do the deed' and create a new blog. It will take me a couple of weeks at least to move all the old posts, but I think it will be worth it because the new site will give me more functions and greater control in terms of layout and organisation. I moved the first batch of entries last night and it was interesting to look back at what we were doing a year ago - time flies. I will still post new entries on this site until I have got all the old entries sorted out on the new site, but if you are fairly new to the blog or you would like to revisit some classic 'Robbie moments' you are welcome to visit the new blog to check out the old entries as they are posted. The address is http://robbiesrandomramblings.blogspot.com/ I would welcome your feedback and suggestions. I put the article about the car wash on to the new site yesterday, people still mention that one from time to time, so it may be worth another look. I still have to add links, photos and several other things to the new blog so please be patient.

Bad Planning 28.11.07

Well, once again it seems I can't win! Sam occasionally tells me off for embarrassing him by writing about him on the blog, but Emily was grumbling at the weekend because I haven't written about her for ages! Hopefully today's entry will put that right.

Emily seems to have settled into university life fairly happily, she is working very hard and always seems to have a deadline to meet. Her English course demands a lot of reading, she has always been an avid reader but I think she finds it hard to muster much enthusiasm about one or two of the set books. When I saw her at the weekend she was struggling with 'Mrs Dalloway' and she gave me a very complicated explanation about the style of writing and why she finds it hard to get into. It made me very grateful that I am free to read whatever I like these days. I'm a bit like Sam in some ways because I often prefer to read non fiction books, but I enjoy crime fiction of various kinds, Kathy Reichs is my favourite these days.

Emily is doing French as her second subject, and that requires a lot of reading too. Some of the French reading material looks really grim, but I'm probably being unfair, I hated French when I was at school but it was a compulsory subject up to 'O' Level so I just had to grin and bear it. I don't know where Emily got her flair for languages from, but it certainly wasn't me!

We are lucky because we see Emily most weekends. I think she misses Oreo more than the rest of us, but it is always nice to see her and to catch up with her news. On the subject of missing things, Oreo will be missing his manhood very soon, I rang the vet today to make an appointment for the 'deed to be done'. He will be six months old on 20th December but it doesn't seem long since he first came to live with us, he was such a cute little kitten. 20th December is also Sam's birthday (a bit of bad planning on my part!) and he will be a teenager at last. He has been telling me that he is almost a teenager for so long that is has almost become his theme tune. I have always felt sorry for Sam because his birthday and Christmas are so close together, but we try to make it special for him. I feel a bit sorry for myself too, because I have 5 family birthdays very close to Christmas, including Sam's and Emily's, it is a very expensive time of year!